ESSAY PRESS CONTEST SERIES
For Essay Pressâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2015 Chapbook Contest, we asked 12 recent Essay
authors each to select and introduce a manuscript extending and/
or challenging the formal possibilities of prose.
Series Editors

“A Young Woman was frozen to death while riding to a ball.”
Mass-produced, sold for a penny, tucked under Christmas trees
and inside puddings, the ubiquitous Frozen Charlotte, named after
a dead young woman, gazed back at the girl caring for its bisque
form, warning her against vices and guarding her secrets. Nicole
Cooley’s Frozen Charlottes, a Sequence drops this doll “head down,
in a cup” among other settings to ask what laws does it conserve
and convey. Charged with an ambivalent yet fierce intimacy, Cooley
plays between poetry and prose in precise language shifting a reader’s
attention to a mother’s loss and a daughter’s rebellion.
I’m struck by the inventiveness of Cooley’s chapbook, which brings
to mind Rainer Marie Rilke’s essay on Lotte Priztel’s 1913 exhibition:
“the doll was so utterly devoid of imagination that what we imagined
for it was inexhaustible.” Cooley interrogates this fetish work’s terror
and tenderness. She never shatters the form or collects it behind
protective glass. Her chapbook’s power lies in its permission to the
dolls to outgrow their uses and to speak a range of experiences
that disturb and delight.
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For Kimiko Hahn

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A Young Woman was frozen to death while riding to a ball.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;The New York Observer: January 1, 1840

Naked, arms molded to her sides, the doll can’t move.
Drop her, head down, in a cup to cool tea quickly.
Sink her all night in a cocktail glass like a swizzle stick.
A girl to stir your drink! Her feet graze its silvered surface.
Plunge her body in. She can swim and spin
in a bath, or you could drown her in your dirty martini.
Come on, no harm done, you’re just playing a game!
Boys only tease if they like you, I was told.
She won’t drown. She’s already dead.

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Once upon a time
on a winter night
a young girl named
Charlotte did not listen to her mother she rode in a sleigh with her
lover to a ball
she would not wear the silver wrap her mother
offered her mother begged her mother pleaded her mother tried
to tie it over her shoulders but Charlotte wanted her pale throat
gleaming wanted her arms bare so the sleigh slipped through
the forest for miles and miles and when the lovers arrived at the
village Charlotte was iced and still and white as a wedding cake

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Let’s speak in praise of the frozen—
My first daughter asleep, her hands pressed flat against my face.
Onyx beads, black ice circling my neck, my mother’s necklace.
My girls in the bath, underwater, eyes squeezed shut, sisters sealed
under glass.
On the subway, each time the train tunnels under the river, how I
hold my legs together.
How I hold my breath. I shut my body up like an umbrella tied and
snapped too tight.

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Need a large amount of Frozen Charlottes?
An orphanage of Frozen Charlottes could be yours for the taking.
You may bid. The reserve is not yet
met. You have one more hour.
Buy huge quantities
of salvaged frozen charlotte dolls
direct from Germany.
75 excavated glazed
Victorian frozen charlotte dolls
size 1-22 inches age 1860.
Current Bid $38.00
How many dolls do you want?
They could be broken, some may have chipped heads,
but these Frozen Charlottes are all clean.
Sold by the gross. Sold by the lot.

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Frozen Charlottes (defn):
Once upon a time, there were dolls, named after a story meant to
teach a lessonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;
Once upon a time between 1850-1920, these dolls were made in
German factories.
Each was one inch tall. These girls were perfect insulation
against winter. If a doll was not intact she was stuffed
into the doll factory wall behind drywall with her sisters.
All of the stories you tell me are so fake, my older daughter says.

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sent home from school for wearing open-toed shoes
sent home from school for a halter roped too loosely over my neck
sent home from school because I wore leggings instead of pants
sent home and told to change out of that too short skirt
sent home because of spaghetti straps
sent home to my mother because there was dress code inspection
and your daughter is not in accordance
Now the mother I wish for a whalebone corset spun tightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;
the always desired 20-inch wasp waistâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;
yet I wish to hold the edges of my mini skirt in my own hands,
to allow whoever I want beneath it.

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I loved my t-strap shoes, color of skim milk, shoes only worn
on Wednesdays.
At Miggyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ballroom Dancing Studio, in New Orleans, in 1978, I was
taught the foxtrot, the waltz, the cha-cha, the box step. Outside,
cars on their way to the Mississippi played The Village People. Cars
driven by other, older boys. Girls lined up on one side of the room
against the mirrors, boys on the other. And we waited. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been
told that if a boy asked us to dance the correct answer was always
no matter what Yes thank you, yes.

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Frozen Charlottes (defn):
Penny Dolls
Solid Chinas
Pudding Dolls
Bathing Babies
Pillar Dolls
Living Dead Dolls
Dolls white as gravel scattered in a parking lot
A doll to fit on the surface of a spoon.
Hold her in your mouthâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;
her body tastes like chalk, bite her thighs, bite her bottom,
and you could chokeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

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Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talk about who hid the dolls in ditches, in drywall,
in rock foundations. Who shoved their bodies hard
inside a wall to keep a factory warm in winter. Who
smashed the dolls together then sealed the wall with plaster?
Kidnapped girlsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;
Who will find them?
Like survivors after a crash, after a blast,
these girls are always post-earthquake, bodies covered in fine white ash.

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What if this doll is my daughter and I don’t want
to love her?
She is the size of my thumb.
Painted black hair
face too pinked, permanently flushed.
She is always ashamed.
Naked: no clothes fit on her body.
She can’t walk.
She can’t raise her arms
or her tiny clenched fists.
She is all body but
she won’t hit me back.
I can’t pry her fingers apart.

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the low-rise jeans
a pink crop top
choice test

crescent of smooth belly
color of the pencil eraser I need for the multiple-

the jean skirt made by tearing off both legs
silver bra strap slipped over the shoulder
Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m the mother

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In praise of white—
Baptismal dress for the babies, linen and itchy, single inherited dress
that made them both cry.
Oyster shells in the parking lot by the river where I kick up dust.
My wedding dress, skimming my shoulders, might show too much skin,
the tailor murmurs in the dressing room.
My half slip—does anyone still wear those now? my older daughter
asks—falling over my thighs like a rinse of cool water.
A muff I loved as a child, cylinder of fur where I stuffed my fingers
so I wouldn’t touch myself.
Or how about the disposable mesh underwear the nurses made me wear
in the hospital as they wheeled me out after the first surgical birth?

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My love, if you find me facedown,
lying in the snow would you save me, would you
pick me up so gently, cradle me, wrap the shawl back

over my shoulders and bring me back to lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

breathe into my lungs

warm my blue skin

my pale mouth

with your own?

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Mistake (defn):
To be in error.
To not understand
when the girl snaps her legs closed,
when she yanks her one-piece down over her thighs
she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want you touching her she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want
your fingers on her skin

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Once upon a time the parents of dead Charlotte mourned her and
the mother she suffered most doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the mother always suffer
most in grief the mother grew her hair long till it fell past her knees
hair to cloak her hair the color of bone color of eggshell

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My daughters are in the bath together
the door

I’m outside

no access to their bodies now

no body

that will fit now

in the bath with them

so I will myself blank

I close my eyes to white
or they’re Charlottes—
glazed only on their backs to float

unclothed

bodies

they drift on the surface
sealed in lockets

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face side up to breathe
ghostly

silent
oh my fairy tale dead girls

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intrigued I yank the garment from the rack and alone in the store
I try on the tight second skin
all tight weave no breathing I
smooth my black dress flat over my stomach my hipbones will
almost show why that supreme and terrible pleasure at a knob of
bone why that pretense of a body that has never held another
as if I was never a mother
Worn under your clothes! Made to help you disappear!
I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell my daughters

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Steampunk jewelryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;perfect for Frozen Charlottes!
Just wrap the doll in clock gears, twist copper wire over her hair,
each body the perfect size for a pendant.
Two dolls can be matching earrings that glitter and swing.
Glue a girl to metal backing to make a brooch.
Fill a jelly jar with bodies for future projects!
A doll sealed in a bottle.
A doll in a pocket watch.
A doll on a chain between my breasts.

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I want a girl to stir my drink. I want to be her, the younger daughter says.
I want to wear a too-tight jacket, skirt slit to the waist.
A low-cut wedding dress.

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Bite and bite and bite my naked bodyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

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Can you hold the doll like language in your mouth?

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The girls roll like stone, like marbles, they slip from my fingers, soap
in a saucer.
My tiny body doubles. Small and already ruined.
My Penny Babies: my Unblinking, Upright Good Daughters.
Cold and iced and priceless, beloved,

white as white out from a tiny bottle my older daughter gives me
to erase my most recent mistake.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Quoted material taken from Kay Desmonde, Dolls and Dolls Houses;
Seba Smith, “Fair Charlotte” (1840); The New York Observer 1840;
and eBay.

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AUTHOR BIO

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and now lives outside of
New York City. She has published five books, most recently Breach
and Milk Dress, both in 2010. She is the director of the MFA Program
in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College-City
University of New York, where she is a professor of English.

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